Modular Kirigami

These are sculptures I made by assembling identical pieces of paper
which have been carefully cut to precise shapes.

As of this
writing, Google reports over fourteen million hits for the word
“origami”, one hundred thousand hits for “kirigami”, thirty-two
thousand hits
for the phrase “modular origami”, and zero web pages with the phrase
“modular
kirigami”. So I wrote this page to be the first about "modular
kirigami".

Modular origami involves assembling folded
modules into a
symmetric structure. So the phrase "modular kirigami" seems appropriate
for the works illustrated here which involve the symmetric assembly of
cut pieces of paper. These are all "pure kirigami" in the sense
that no folding, glue, or tape is used.

Below are some images, but you really need to hold them in your hand to
understand them. For details, see my paper
in the Proceedings of the 2007 Bridges
Conference: